First off, apologies if someone has already suggested something similar. But I propose the unit disband feature for land units be modified as follows: (1) No change if the unit being disbanded is within the player's home country and in full supply. In the case of the British Commonwealth, only units actually in the UK are considered in the home country to discourage gamey disbanding of Canadian or Mideast armies. (2) Reduced PP recovery the further the unit is away from the player's home country or not in full supply (all the way down to 0 for faraway units). (3) Perhaps slightly reduced manpower recovery as well per (2) but not as significant reduction as for PP's.

I think this would solve the gaminess problem with the feature while still allowing players to change the character of an army if they want to take advantage of new unit types (training of tank units, etc. or getting rid of garrisons to make way for better units). It would also still allow players who have overbuilt to configure a leaner, meaner army. And players could still take the hit for disbanding faraway units if they absolutely need to for maintenance cost reasons. They just would get little other benefit from it.

I don't think a distinction between home and conquered territory has been suggested for disband before. It's an interesting idea... I'd like to hear more players thoughts! [8D]

warspite1

I think this is a great idea.

Should players be allowed to disband units to change the make-up of their armies? Yes, absolutely. But for that to be realistic, those units should be in the home country and not hundreds/thousands of miles away where they would (in the real world) still need transporting back home.

First off some of the biggest abuses are with the UK.. not all of them but alot of them. Disbanding the Canadian Corps, the Gibralter and Malta Garrisons would not be effected at all as those units start in home territory already. I suppose you could create another country called the commonwealth and make all that extra British Isle territory CW and UK conquored but that seems somewhat complex

I honestly think the way to go about this might be simply to allow ONE and only one disbandment per side per turn. This would stop wholesale changes and make them gradual. This combined with reducing the armoured train issue would go along way towards remving gamey tactics, and there would be alot less disbandment with the removal of armoured trains being so beneficial.

My proposal would consider only the British units in the UK (home isles) to be within the home territory for purposes of the unit disband feature and not any units elsewhere, including Canada, Gibraltar, Malta, Mideast, etc. (See above.) Armoured train issue should be separately addressed (maybe with increased maintenance cost).

I understand. And I certainly do not know the coding behind this game, but currently all those place are UK home territory. Nobody else really has that problem, I mean Libya is Italian but its not an abuse if Italian units in Libya disband because well.. it never happens.. same with Tunisia/Morocco with French units. So one would likely have to create a new country and make Canada Egypt Gibralter and Malta part of that new country in order to make things work right. Maybe that is easy, but likely it isn't. Its possible one could just code up the disband function so it knows to only allow disbands in certain hexs.

What I was saying was that if you fix the armoured train issue, and limited disbands to one per side per turn you would likely find that the disband is not such a horrible problem as it admittedly is currently!

So one would likely have to create a new country and make Canada Egypt Gibralter and Malta part of that new country in order to make things work right. Maybe that is easy, but likely it isn't. Its possible one could just code up the disband function so it knows to only allow disbands in certain hexs.

Both are possible, however, with the game rules as they stand, creating a new country for British colonies would prevent the UK deploying troops in those cities, which is obviously not what we want.

We could code the disband function to only work in certain hexes, but that seems like a rather arbitrary rule...

Perhaps the best way to make this work would be to calculate the distance (for purposes of the PP reduction) between the unit being disbanded and a country's capital cities. Say - the PP production begins to kick in if the unit is more than 5 hexes from a capital city. Anyway, it's just a thought.

BTW - I don't mind the other proposal of 1 per turn limitation. But I think it would still be a little too easy to abuse given the number of turns in this game. This applies to Britain but can potentially apply to others, including minors like Portugal, and even the central powers in some situations (Turkey, Germans deep in Russia). And I don't see there being anything gamey or objectionable about disbanding multiple units close to home in a single turn. For example, a country that no longer needs garrisons - like France - could disband a couple of units in the home country in order to save on maintenance and produce better units.

If I want the Canadian Corps in Egypt, I can disband it at birth in Canada and rebuild it in Cairo for a net gain in PPs, shipping, efficiency, and time. That ain't right.

warspite1

100% Agreed

If a player can be allowed to do that under the rules, then you could argue that there is no point having units coming from Canada. No one would ever bother sailing the troops to Europe because of the gains in not so doing.

At a time when the majority of posters are asking for more realism (less armoured trains, no/greatly reduced strategic bombing, more (and appropriately balanced) naval units, hits taken by fleets operating in confined coastal waters etc) it seems counter-intuitive to dumb down one of the key aspects of British Commonwealth participation in the two World Wars.

I admit I do it every time (I take the back every time after the first time I drove it by transport and had it arrive like 5 turns later and land in the UK red!) I do the same with the Malta and Gibralter Garrisons!